A college student in Leicester had initially thought she was suffering from flu symptoms. Turns out, she had meningitis and ended up having to get her legs amputated. According to the New York Post, 19-year-old Ketia Moponda had only been at university for eight days when she became ill.
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College Student Recalls Getting Legs Amputated After Thinking She Had The Flu
It started as a mild cough, which didn’t seem out of the ordinary during freshers’ week. But her symptoms slowly got worse. She recalled admitting to her friends how terrible she felt.
Friends and family got worried one day when Moponda wasn’t responding to their messages. A staff member at De Montfort University and a student entered her room to find her unconscious.
“I have no memory of any of this but I’m lucky to be alive,” said Moponda, who had a hazy memory of being sick. “When I got to hospital my blood oxygen level was at 1%.”
Once admitted to a hospital, doctors diagnosed Moponda with meningococcal septicaemia. This sickness caused bacterial meningitis, which led to sepsis. By January 2025, the student underwent life-altering amputations that took all her fingers and both her legs.
“The blood wasn’t circulating around my body and my skin was colourless,” said Moponda. “My feet were green and swollen. My organs were failing, and doctors told my family that if I woke at all I’d likely be brain dead.”
The student recalled her sickness starting all the way back on September 25, 2024. She felt drowsy while eating dinner and expected to feel better the next morning. Unfortunately, she felt much worse.
By lunchtime the following day, she told her cousin over the phone she felt like she’d pass out at any moment. Moponda even phoned her best friend that evening to say she felt like she was “going to die.”
That same best friend alerted the university after Moponda didn’t check in with her cousin on September 27. After arriving at Leicester Royal Infirmary hospital, Moponda was in a coma. Then, two days later, she woke up.
A Long Recovery Journey
Despite being in the hospital, the student recalled feeling horrible. “I couldn’t see or speak, and it was a whole week before I started speaking,” said Moponda. “Most of the time, I didn’t know where I was.”
The worst was yet to come. The skin on her fingers began to darken and swell due to a lack of blood flow. Then, two weeks later, she caught a horrific flesh-eating disease on her buttocks.
By December, they transferred her to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. Finally, on January 7, she underwent amputations that saved her life.
“Basically my legs had died because of a lack of blood going to them,” she said. Moponda recalled how “terrible” that time was for her.
“I just kept crying all the time,” she remembered. “I felt so hurt; it was killing my spirit.” Even though she wouldn’t be sick after her fingers and legs were amputated, she felt a huge loss.
“I felt like my whole life had just begun, and now I had to start all over again differently,” said Moponda.
Moponda finally left the hospital on February 24 and is determined to get her life back together. She used to go to the gym daily, but now she’s learning to walk again.
“I loved being active, and I will be again,” said Moponda. She has already been able to walk in parks unaided with prosthetic legs.
The student is now waiting to see if she can have prosthetic fingers as well. She also still has big dreams in mind. “At first I thought I’d give up on modelling but I won’t,” she said.
“You don’t have to hide who you are. This doesn’t make me less of a person. I am unapologetically me, and I want to help others to feel confident about who they are and how they look.”